{"id":4691,"date":"2018-03-07T19:02:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T00:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=4691"},"modified":"2018-05-01T12:41:50","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T16:41:50","slug":"dayfall-by-michael-david-ares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/dayfall-by-michael-david-ares\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayfall by Michael David Ares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael David Ares turns the classic Asimov short story \u201cNightfall\u201d on its head in Dayfall<\/strong>, his debut novel about the world gone dark and waiting for the sun to break through a layer of black clouds.<\/p>\n

The cause is given as freak weather systems that resulted from a nuclear exchange between middle eastern nations, causing a stalled cloud system over the North Atlantic, extending over the cities from New York to Paris, as well as accelerated climate change and sea level rise.\u00a0 The effect is that New York, and the other affected cities, have been in perpetual darkness for years, while waters have risen to flood parts of the city. Predictions are that the clouds are going to part soon, and the now night acclimated denizens of a city that never ever, sleeps, are being fed a diet of news from scientists saying that the everyone will panic and run amok when the lights come on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an absurd premise from half a dozen standpoints, but it\u2019s the premise we\u2019re given, so let\u2019s move on to the story, OK?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a serial killer loose in the dark apple, and he\u2019s feeding into the fear and frenzy about the coming daylight. The cops are less than useful, partly due to corruption and partly because they\u2019ve been supplanted, at least in part, by a private security firm whose head wants to be mayor. With an election looming, the current Mayor reaches out to a friend, the Police Commissioner of Philadelphia, to see if he can provide her with an investigator she can call her own, and it just so happens that he does.<\/p>\n

Jon Phillips is a small-town cop who went outside his jurisdiction to bring down a serial killer that had Philly\u2019s finest stumped. Being shown up doesn\u2019t go well in the city of brotherly love, so the commish is more than happy to recommend him.<\/p>\n

When Jon arrives in the Big Dark Apple the mayor tells him that he\u2019s got to solve the serial killer case before daylight breaks out in 24 hours or the city will wind up under control of Gareth Render, who has a repressive agenda for the city. Jon is paired with the obligatory cynical burnout, Frank Halladay, and the two of them scour the city for the killer while time runs out. They\u2019re assisted by a Amira Naseem, spunky medical examiner who\u2019s Muslim heritage is just the sort of thing that Render will come down hard on. At one of the crime sites, Jon meets a bartender that throws him a curve. There\u2019s no time in this caper for falling for a dame, but every PI is hunting for something, and when he meets Mallory, it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s found it.\u00a0 Even if she\u2019s being paid off by Gotham Security, the goons that want to give New York back to New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

The trio zoom around crime scenes, active or prior, hunting for clues, and the deeper they go the more confusing the hunt becomes. Jon has extraordinary instincts, and they\u2019re the only thing standing between the city and bedlam.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I don\u2019t think the story ever really gets over the weak premise. Asimov\u2019s short story, \u201cNightfall,\u201d had a solidly built setup, with a world in a solar system with multiple suns and a 2,000 year period between nightfalls. Asimov\u2019s story unwinds over a period of days, compared to this story, which unfolds at a cinematic pace normally reserved for Kiefer Sutherland. Coming out of Tor Books, I\u2019d expect a better class of tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael David Ares turns the classic Asimov short story \u201cNightfall\u201d on its head in Dayfall, his debut novel about the world gone dark and waiting for the sun to break through a layer of black clouds. The cause is given as freak weather systems that resulted from a nuclear exchange between middle eastern nations, causing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4692,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691\/revisions\/4692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}